Because of antiquated laws and recent legal developments advanced by the cruise industry, the cruise line will escape virtually all legal accountability for the deaths.

Let’s look first at the sad case of little 6 year old Qwentyn Hunter who died on the Carnival Victory last week. He died underwater in a swimming pool that Carnival decided not to supervise with a lifeguard for, what I believe to be, purely financial reasons.

A child on vacation dead at age 6.

Is it foreseeable that a child may drown in a pool? Of course. We have written recently about a 4 year old boy who is severely brain injured after slipping under the water on a cruise ship Disney which also didn’t bother to assign a lifeguard to the pool.

Put aside the debate whether the boy’s death was a lack of personal responsibility of the parents or a lack of corporate responsibility due to the the malfeasance of the cruise line (or both), what is the maximum exposure presented to Carnival?

The answer, sadly, is just the child’s burial and burial expenses. How is that possible?

There is a law in the U.S. called The Death On The High Seas Act ("DOHSA").

DOHSA is an archaic law enacted in 1920 which provides only "pecuniary" losses to the survivors of someone who dies on the high seas. "Pecuniary" damages means only those financial losses, such as lost wages or medical expenses, suffered by those who are dependent on the dead person. In cases of a dead child or a dead retiree, there are no lost wages and no one dependent on the child or retiree for support. In Qwentyn’s situation, there are obviously no lost wages or medical expenses. So all that the family could possibly receive in compensation after an expensive, long-drawn-out lawsuit is whatever it costs to bury a child these days.

If the cruise line is negligent for a child’s death in an unattended pool, it will pay a maximum of $10,000 or so if liability is proven. Big deal. From a financial perspective, the cruise line is ahead of the game by not paying millions to employ lifeguards on over a hundred Carnival cruise ships to keep the kids safe. Carnival’s Micky Arison, worth around 6 billion dollars, gets to keep his bounty.

Crew members who die due to the negligence of the cruise lines face the same hardship of DOHSA.

But that’s not all. The cruise lines have also fought tooth & nail to keep the claims of "foreign" crew members outside of the U.S. legal system and deprive injured crew members from having their cases heard by U.S. juries by insisting that they resolve their cases through "arbitration."

Read about this injustice here. The Filipinos face a "schedule" of compensation depending on the injury. A lost finger, or hand, or an arm may result in an award of only $7,500 or $25,000 or $35,000. A death? $50,000, plus only $7,000 per child with a limit of 4 children.

One of the worst cases involved a Filipino crew member who received 35% burns on his body in a clear case of the vessel operator’s negligence. At the ship owner’s request, the disabled and disfigured crew member’s case was dismissed from the U.S. legal system and sent to Manila where a Kangaroo Court awarded the burned Filipino just $1,870.00 (US).

The cruise lines don’t want you to understand what happens when the nice, smiling Filipino waiters or bartenders who serve your family are subsequently seriously injured or die on cruise ships. It is fundamentally different and absolutely unfair compared to when people are injured or die on land.

And this is exactly how the multi-billion dollar cruise industry wants it.

Its sad , but this unethical business tactics of Cruise liners have to be exposed. More awareness is the best option.

JB

Having lost a child on a cruise ship, I can tell you that nothing, NOTHING, is more straight-to-the-heart dagger-like, than being told, “We’re sorry but your child’s life was worthless.” Even when that child dies as a result of their medical care or lack of!! DOSHA needs to go, then maybe the cruise line business would go too!! I hope I live to see the day that that industry hurts a fraction of as much as all of us who have lost loved ones on cruise ships do every single day! Thanks Jim for putting it out there everyday the way you do so people know what kind of a rapacious, repugnant corporate entity they are thinking of doing business with. People need to Know before they GO!

jean Richard

I will never use carnival cruise ships for my family vacation ever again.

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Cruise ship accidents, injuries, crimes, disappearances, fires, and collisions on the high seas involve issues of maritime law. Jim Walker graduated from law school in 1983 and has been handling maritime law cases for the past thirty-five years. He handles a wide variety of cases from serious injuries to the highest profile sexual assault and cruise crime cases.